


All That Came Before

by atlanticslide



Category: Unter Uns
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 21:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14387376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlanticslide/pseuds/atlanticslide
Summary: Ringo’s an asshole about 60% of the time, even now.  He’s calculating and careful and does his best to keep people at a distance even when it’s clear that he wants so desperately for those same people to care about him.  He’s smart, and he’s kind and thoughtful (with East, at least, if not with anyone else), and his drive to support himself, to help support Kira, to be successful is admirable, despite the lengths he may have gone to in the past to achieve that success.  His comfort with himself, with being in love with a man, is lightyears away from what Easy remembers of the ordeal with Yannick.And it’s heartbreaking that Paul and Sonja will never see any of it.





	All That Came Before

**Author's Note:**

> Based on spoilers for this weeks' episodes (and thus will probably be jossed immediately). idk, I just really want Easy and Ringo to talk about their feelings a lot. Also, um... this got pretty sappy at a certain point. Whatever, that's how I roll.

“Okay so…” Ringo says, almost to himself as he studies the quite frankly magnificent structure he’s constructed. “One more on this side should do it,” he adds, balancing a final small log onto the side of the triangular pile. He doesn’t stop his work, however, and Easy watches him from a short distance away, watches him move to crouch down, blow gently at the hint of smouldering coming from the center of the woodpile, encouraging the small tendrils of smoke to grow bigger.

Easy loves watching him.

He wasn’t lying back when he said that he knows Ringo, knows him better than Tobias, but there are still lots of things about Ringo that surprise him, and he loves that feeling of wonder it creates, like they’re still in the first blush of their relationship. Ringo’s poking gently at the fire with a stick, stoking it higher, and Easy can’t help the smile that spreads across his lips.

“Ah,” Ringo says, satisfied as he sits back on his heels. The tiny sparks of fire that Easy had been trying in vain to nurture for more than an hour finally begin to take hold of the wood, and within a few moments the fire is growing, spreading through the wood. “Et voilà!” He turns to Easy with a pleased smile that makes Easy want to shove him back against the ground and climb on top of him.

“What?” Ringo asks, his smile turning a little self-conscious. He’s still prodding the stick into the fire, shifting a bit of dirt and ash around, and Easy’s eyes flick briefly down to watch the motion before he looks back up to catch Ringo watching him in return.

“Nothing,” Easy replies with a shrug, not bothering to hide his own smile.

Ringo’s grin turns conspiratorial, Cheshire-like. “You’re a little turned on right now, aren’t you?” 

“No,” Easy scoffs with a mock frown. “Of course not.”

“Come on, admit it,” Ringo teases, an expression on his face that used to infuriate Easy when directed at him, that one that says he knows just how smart he is, knows just what his opponent’s weakness is. “Watching me is getting you going!” 

“Piss off…” Easy says without any heat, rolling his eyes a bit and crossing his arms in front of him. 

Ringo rises from his crouched position and comes over to Easy, grasps his elbows to pull him in closer. “You want to get down on your knees right now. And all because of a little fire?”

The image of it - going down to his knees in front of Ringo, tugging his pants down, taking out his cock - flits across his mind briefly, unbidden, and his mouth goes a little dry, but like hell is he going to give Ringo the satisfaction right now.

He does admit, though, “Okay, yes,” as he reaches up to wrap his arms around Ringo’s neck, ignoring Ringo’s smug smile. “A little.” 

“Turned on by fire!” Ringo laughs, and holds on tightly when Easy tries to push him away in mock annoyance. “Never would’ve guessed.”

“Oh come on,” Easy replies, ending his momentary feigned resistance to settle his weight a little more fully against Ringo. “It’s like a… a primal thing, isn’t it?” He runs his fingers through the back of Ringo’s hair, thrills at the happy, relaxed expression Ringo’s wearing. “Seeing a hot guy, out conquering the wilderness…”

Ringo snorts lightly at that. “Not to downplay my amazing skills, but all I did was start a fire.”

“You started a fire that I’ve been failing at for hours,” Easy corrects him, nodding over to said fire, which has grown big enough to actually be giving off some warmth, finally. “And you fixed my tent, and you figured out what was wrong with my lantern.” 

“Hmm, you know, you’re right,” Ringo says with an air of reflection that doesn’t match the smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I am _quite_ extraordinary.” 

“Alright,” Easy rolls his eyes, giving him another little shove before immediately pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw in apology. 

The crackling of the fire grows louder, pulling Ringo’s attention away. He gives Easy a quick peck on the cheek before turning to go and crouch again in front of the fire, shifting some of the logs around. Easy follows after him, settles down to sit nearby, enjoying the fire’s warmth. He pulls his legs up to rest his arms across his knees, watching Ringo thoughtfully for a while.

“Where’d you learn about all of this stuff, anyway?” he asks as Ringo settles a small, fat log against the base of the fire.

Ringo doesn’t turn to look at him, just continues busying himself with shifting pieces of wood around and occasionally poking at the fire. “My father,” he says, reaching over to move a rock in place alongside several others circling the fire. “He took us camping every summer, loved showing us how to fish and build fires without matches and find food in the woods, all that stuff.”

Easy watches him carefully, watches the reflection of the fire play across Ringo’s face as he stares down into it. It’s rare that Tobias speaks about their father, but this may be the first time in recent memory that Easy’s heard Ringo bring him up. 

“You loved it too, hmm?” he asks, gently, unsure exactly how to proceed in such uncharted territory, desperate not to scare Ringo off.

Ringo cocks his head a bit, looks like he maybe wants to shrug it off, and he makes a half-hearted attempt at brushing off the weight of the conversation. “Well, of course it’s just good sense to learn wilderness survival skills.”

He looks over at Easy with a faint smile that looks a little forced, and Easy doesn’t reply, just meets Ringo’s eyes and waits for him to go on, tries to convey as much as he can without using words his wish for Ringo to say what he’s really thinking right now.

And Ringo seems to get it, giving him a brief quirk of his mouth and says as he turns back to the fire, “Sometimes I think it was one of the only things we could really talk about.” 

Easy wants to touch him. He wants to go over and wrap his arms around Ringo and listen to him speak, but he’s terrified that any wrong movement here will send Ringo running - if only metaphorically. Sometimes speaking with Ringo is like dealing with a wild animal that Easy is desperate not to scare off.

And the thing is, Ringo’s capacity to be open and expressive with Easy, to show Easy just how much he loves him, is already a constant, pleasant surprise, so he knows Ringo’s ability to share what he’s thinking deserves more credit. For all of his cold, brittle exterior, Ringo loves Easy so openly, rarely holds back from touching or kissing, wrapping an arm around him when they sit beside each other or grabbing his hand as they walk down the street. It’s nothing like Easy would have expected a relationship with Ringo to be (if he’d ever given it any thought before he realized he was gay), and it’s like a constant warm weight in his chest.

But he still can’t help feeling at times like he has to be a little gentle when navigating Ringo’s feelings - especially his feelings on something he speaks so rarely about.

“Sounds fun,” Easy prompts carefully, watching as Ringo shifts the rocks around to fit more snugly together before sitting back and wiping his hands off on his pants. He’s still too far away. Easy itches to move closer.

“I guess it was,” Ringo replies thoughtfully. “He used to take me and Kira out on these weekend trips - she’d spend the whole time complaining, of course, and whining about not having her face creams - ”

“Unlike you, of course.”

“Of course.” Ringo turns to throw him a brief smile before going on. “This one time, we were camped out by this little pond, and he was determined to teach us how to fish - he tried every different kind of bait, but every fish Kira caught, it just slipped away as soon as she pulled the line up. He was so annoyed, so much more than she was.” He shakes his head, laughing at the memory, and Easy smiles as he watches him. Ringo turns to him, more animated now as he goes on, vaguely illustrating the story in hand motions as he speaks. 

“So finally Kira manages to catch this huge fish, absolutely massive, we couldn’t believe it!” He holds up his hands to show the size, perhaps embellished, but Easy is mostly just enthralled by watching him speak. “And she gets it into the boat, she’s so proud of herself. Took her about 20 minutes to finally wrestle it out of the water. And then papa goes to pick it up to take a picture, and the moment he gets the hook out of its mouth, the stupid thing slips right out of his hands and back into the water!” 

Easy laughs along with Ringo, watches as his eyes dance a bit and then grow a little cold, a little sad. 

“She was so angry with him,” he says, his chuckles petering out with the words as he shakes his head. He’s quiet for a long moment, staring at the fire, before he adds, “I wish we could do that again.” 

Easy watches him for a few quiet moments, his stomach feeling a bit knotted with a familiar sort of sadness. “You must miss them,” he says. 

“Sure.” Ringo shrugs, reaches for a nearby stick to fidget with. "Or… I don’t know.” He pauses for a long moment, pushing the stick gently against the ground in front of him and then at the fire. “It’s hard to describe. But it almost feels like - like I miss them seeing me now. I don’t know, that doesn’t really make sense, but. Who I am now, things I’ve accomplished that I wish they could see.”

He trails off and doesn’t look up from the ground. He’s a meter or two away from Easy, too far away to touch, and neither one of them makes a move to bridge the gap, but somehow Easy feels closer to him in this moment. The sting of it is probably more softened now than for Ringo, the years slowly dulling the pain to something more muted than it once was, now more like a distant ache that never quite goes away. But he still has those same thoughts, at least once or twice per week - what would she think of how he’s turned out, would she like his photography, would she be proud of his small, bustling businesses. What would she think of him being gay. 

Ringo’s an asshole about 60% of the time, even now. He’s calculating and careful and does his best to keep people at a distance even when it’s clear that he wants so desperately for those same people to care about him. He’s smart, and he’s kind and thoughtful (with East, at least, if not with anyone else), and his drive to support himself, to help support Kira, to be successful is admirable, despite the lengths he may have gone to in the past to achieve that success. His comfort with himself, with being in love with a man, is lightyears away from what Easy remembers of the ordeal with Yannick.

And it’s heartbreaking that Paul and Sonja will never see any of it. 

“When my mother died,” he says, dredging up memories he hasn’t given voice to in years. Ringo turns sharply to look at him, his eyes a little wide, and the familiarity there is almost too much for Easy to handle, but he holds Ringo’s gaze. “People would say to me things like ‘she’ll always be with you’ and ‘she’s up there somewhere looking down on you.’ It doesn’t really help though, does it?”

“No. It doesn’t.” Ringo gives him a long, considering look. Easy squirms a bit under the scrutiny, clasping his hands together tightly unsure how to read Ringo’s expression. “I forgot that that’s something we have in common.” 

Easy gives him an awkward, sad smile. There’s not much to say to that, but he says, fumbling, feeling a bit stupid, “I wish we didn’t.”

Ringo doesn’t really say anything in response, just hums an agreement, and then shuffles over, on his knees across the ground to come settle back down next to Easy. He pulls his legs up, mimicking Easy’s position, and lets their legs rest against each other, their elbows jostling. 

“How old were you when she died?” he asks, looking sidelong at Easy.

“Sixteen.” 

“Younger than I was.”

“Mm,” Easy rumbles, a vague affirmation, nothing else to really say to that. It doesn’t make it any worse, or any better, for him than it was for Ringo. He shakes his head a bit, grinning softly as he says, “Man, I was an asshole back then. You wouldn’t have liked me much. Or actually, maybe you would’ve liked me more.”

Ringo laughs at that, a burst that seems to take even him by surprise. “Please. You? An asshole.” He laughs again, the motion of it jostling Easy’s shoulder. “Right.”

“Really!” Easy returns the laughter, feigning offense. “I even stole a car once.”

“Yeah, okay.” Ringo’s smile is wide, grinning, now. It’s beautiful. 

They laugh for a few moments, just easy and comfortable, and it’s funny to talk about this with someone who didn’t know him then but who still can probably imagine what he was feeling, what it was like. 

“It was a strange time,” he says as his laughter fades. “After she died, I was so… I was sad, of course, and heartbroken, I missed her terribly, but.” He pauses for a long moment, unsure of how to articulate something that he’s never really said out loud to anyone before. Unsure, even, why he’s saying it now. He stares at the fire, watches the flames spit out tiny sparks that fade into the air, thinks about the first time he saw the Schillerallee. “More than anything else, I just remember having this constant, overwhelming sense of _fear_.” He ventures a look back at Ringo, who’s staring at him with an inscrutable expression.

“Fear,” Ringo replies, not exactly a question.

“Yeah,” Easy replies, his chest tight. He shrugs, bites the corner of his mouth briefly, tries to think of how to explain it. “My mother was dead, my father was gone, I was sent off to family I barely knew…” He shrugs again, pauses as he briefly revisits that period. It feels a little like reopening an old wound. “It felt like I was just totally alone. Like I had no one. I worried about who would... I don’t know. Who would care about me, who would love me.” 

He’s tempted to add something, saying something like _I know how dumb that sounds…_ Something to lighten the moment. But he feels Ringo tense beside him, and when he glances over, he finds Ringo staring at the ground. 

“I feel like that all the time,” Ringo tells him quietly, without looking up. 

The words hit him like a weight against his chest. “Even now?”

Ringo shrugs and looks up at him, clearly struggling to maintain the placid, cool facade. “Kira’s in another country, Leonie’s on another _continent_. Tobias is barely speaking to me even on a good day…”

“And me?” 

He’s quiet for long enough that Easy grows a little worried, unsure how to take this. 

“Ringo,” he prompts gently, trying to read Ringo’s expression. Trying not to push too hard.

Ringo takes a long breath, like he’s steeling himself for something difficult, something monumental. “Sometimes I think - I think maybe he’s right.” He looks over to catch Easy’s eye. “That as much as I don’t want to, I’m going to do something to screw this all up. Or you’re eventually going to remember that you hate me, and then…”

Easy can’t think of a thing to say to that. It’s strange to have Ringo as the one so clearly laying out his fears - it comes naturally for Easy, that kind of honesty, and with Ringo, he’s learned some of those anxieties that Ringo won’t really talk openly about. He can hear the hurt in Ringo’s voice every time he grumbles about Tobias’s attitude, or remarks, self-depricatingly, about how reasonable it is for others not to trust him. So Easy knows those things are there - he knew it even way back when they hated each other, as far back as everything with Yannick. 

But it’s a rare moment, even now, when Ringo is willing to articulate them so openly. A disappointing exam grade was enough for Ringo to hide it away from Easy, but somehow, a week later, he’s exposing a delicate, raw part of himself for Easy to see, and the complexity of how pleased he is at that alongside the profound hurt he feels at Ringo’s words is enough to make him ache. 

So he shifts closer, moves so that he can draw Ringo in with his chest pressed to Ringo’s back and his arms circling tightly. Ringo leans into him, because this whole relationship is nothing if not full of surprises and wonder, Ringo’s propensity for cuddling chief among them, and he presses a kiss to Ringo’s temple in response. 

“Well,” Easy says quietly, his words spoken into Ringo’s hairline, his lips brushing against the short strands as he speaks. “I think we’re doing okay so far.” He squeezes Ringo a little tighter, and Ringo brings his hands up to rest on Easy’s forearms around him. 

“Except for me accidentally marrying someone else,” he adds as an afterthought. “And snooping through your stuff. Actually, every issue we’ve had so far has been down to me. If we’re going to worry about one of us fucking up this relationship, it’s probably me…”

Ringo gives a small, huffing laugh. “Every issue other than me selling your kiosk, you mean.”

“Well, there is that too,” Easy replies. He has no idea how they’re able to joke about it, but somehow they can, and he hopes it stays that way, as something that they can look back on as an awful mistake that they got through and were somehow made stronger for having navigated it. 

“Minor bumps,” Ringo says, taking one of Easy’s hands to lace their fingers together.

Easy squeezes his hand. “Every relationship has them.”

They sit together like that for a while, watching the fire quietly and wrapped up together. Easy’s head rests against Ringo’s, and he can feel the gentle, steady rise and fall of Ringo’s chest under their arms. It’s the calmest he’s felt in weeks, with Ringo settled in his arms and the fire crackling in front of them, but there’s still a thought nagging at the back of his mind. 

“Can I ask you something?” Easy says softly, speaking mostly into Ringo’s hair, vaguely trying to muffle his words, unsure whether he should actually bring this up.

“Hmm,” Ringo hums noncomittaly in response, sounding like he might be falling asleep.

“Do you think about the accident?”

Ringo’s quiet, but not for more than a brief moment. Carefully avoiding the question, he replies, “Do you?”

Easy lets him avoid it. “Sometimes,” he replies, letting his mind drift back there, hearing the phantom echo of crunching metal and shattering glass. “I should’ve died. I still don’t really know why I didn’t.” _Why I didn’t and they did_ goes unsaid. 

At that, Ringo pauses for a long time. Easy shifts a bit, nervous, a little self-conscious. It’s a strange subject, and he’s not sure why he even brought it up, especially after how much they’ve talked about tonight and how deeply Ringo’s already exposed himself. There’s this still this strange anxiety Easy has, though, when it comes to the subject of Ringo's parents - at least, when he's talking to Ringo directly about them, wondering why he’s not in their place, wondering if perhaps Ringo has ever had those thoughts. 

But Ringo’s fingers, still entwined with Easy’s, squeeze tightly. He pushes back against Easy, forcing Easy to hug him a little more tightly, and Easy shifts his head a bit to rest his mouth against Ringo’s temple. 

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Ringo says quietly. It’s perhaps the strangest declaration of love that Easy’s ever received, but there’s no doubt that’s what it is, and it fills him up with an indescribable warmth. 

His lips brush across Ringo’s skin as his smile grows. “You know,” he replies, holding Ringo a little tighter. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone like I love you either.” He can’t remember if he’s said it out loud, but it’s been true for weeks, maybe months. Ringo turns his head enough to press a kiss to the side of Easy’s mouth, a little awkward and utterly perfect. 

Nothing else really needs to be said.


End file.
